Later Before the End
by elwisty
Summary: Love and lies after the Island. Rewritten.


Leaving the greenhouse is always strange; inside, the air is humid and thick with pollen and the earthy smell of plants and, near the door, the sweet odour of her Amazon Lilies; outside, there is nothing but an unremarkable spread of grass with the picnic table and chairs squatting dourly in the centre, as if the lawn is a flying carpet that might escape if not weighted down. There is a bird table too.

And, today, a man in a linen suit, his back to her.

The turbine whirrs gently in clear air. One night a few months ago, Thomas went to bed with a headache and got up the next morning with a new obsession. He gave interviews, of course, to sympathetic news-hubs. Enfant Terrible of Aussie Art Goes Green. All about how Thomas would save the world by flushing the toilet once a day and washing his hair with rainwater; no matter that it was too late to save anything.

At least the latest articles were better than the tell-alls he'd done the year after they first got married, when she'd read about a woman called Claire in the papers, who couldn't sleep alone and was 'mentally haunted in a big way, really traumatized' by the crash and the three years she'd spent alone on Rincah believing she was the only survivor. Afterwards, in the salon, picking out Good Vibrations on the piano, she had said to the wall: I killed people. I once killed a man called Justin by swinging an axe at his stomach. Then she had phoned Lizzie from the local moms' group to make sure Aaron was okay and that the other kids were playing nice with him.

Although she approached soundlessly, he shifts from one foot to the other, letting her know she's been detected. He is the standing with a small pot of red flowers under his arm, conducting a detailed examination of the seeds on the bird table. When she comes up beside him, he briefly looks up and smiles. She shakes her head at him.

"Where d' you get this stuff from?" The suit looks expensive; she tweaks the sleeve and guesses that the lining is genuine silk. It's so well-tailored it almost makes the man inside look taller than five foot eight.

"Savile Row."

"Terrible boy. Tell the truth, turnip-head."

"A special person had it made for my birthday," he says archly.

"As special as me?" she says, and immediately regrets it. She wanted the question to sound playful; it doesn't. Aaron turns to face her. He clasps her shoulder and cocks his head impishly to one side.

"You are a very special person, mom."

"And don't you forget it!" She manages to pull the tone off this time. It sounds convincing, even to her. "Is that for me?"

"What? This thing?" He waves the pot around a little out of her reach. "No, it's for dad. I thought he could rip off the petals and call the remains _Meditations on a Dead Anthurium_ or _Twenty Years and Still No Hugo Boss_."

They smile at each other. "He thinks he has a real chance this year…"

"He thinks he'll win the Hugo every year. That reminds me – our Hugo says hi. And Walt told me to do this -" he kisses her on the cheek " – and give you these -" the flowers are pressed into her hands "- and to tell you that he's still single and wants you to name the day." It's so good to laugh with Aaron. It reminds her of how he laughed as a baby, all dimples and uncomprehending, undemanding joy. Everyone deserves at least one moment of shared happiness as pure as that.

By silent agreement, they sit down at the picnic table. Somewhere in the part of her mind thinks in oughts and shoulds, the part that reminds her to reply to Kate's emails, she knows she should call Thomas down from the house – Thomas, who hasn't seen his son for six months. She pays no heed. She wants her boy all to herself. He means so much more to her than he ever could to Thomas.

"D'you remember when I was five, and you used to look at my palm at tell me I'd be a famous musician?"

"Course. It was that, or a surgeon like your grandpa or a hunter like my friend John."

Aaron tilts his head back to look at the sky, perhaps eyeing the few calm white tufts that are drifting across the excess of summertime blue. His curly blonde hair is as thick as it's ever been, though he had his thirtieth last the year before; Walt sent her a photo of the party. Everyone seems to send her photos these days. She doesn't know why. Her son stretches out his hand.

"I reckon I'm a bit old for med school," he says in his affected Pommy accent. "What do you see these days?" She pretends to examine the lines on his soft palm. He should have been called Peter.

"Well, there's a beautiful girl – no, a young woman. A Pisces." She tries to catch his eye. "She has long black hair and she's standing on a beach looking out to sea…"

"Not bad. Keep going."

"And there's Walt and Julian and they're arguing about something -"

"That's a universal constant. No points for guessing that, mom."

"And I can see – Hurley – he's watching someone climb out of a chopper near the island runway. She's a bit older than me – she's got freckles – she's…"

"She's Kate. Hugo told you, huh?" It is his voice, not his face, that frowns. He pulls his hand away.

"No. Kate told me. Phoned me a few days ago."

Without warning, he jumps up and assumes one of the yoga-like attitudes that he invented as a boy – balancing on tiptoe on one leg, he leans precariously back as if trying to touch the grass with his head, hands folded under his neck. "You still keep in touch then?"

"I hear from her a few times a year, mostly." He straightens his back. For a few seconds, she is the recipient of a cold, unblinking stare, and she doesn't recognize her son.

"And does she still send me letters?" Long, carefully handwritten letters with sketches of animals or photos of the places Kate was visiting as part of her job. Sometimes there'd be a little parcel with a carving inside or a tiger's tooth – the kinds of thing that a boy would have loved to possess. The letters had arrived with remarkable regularity for more than a decade, on the first day of every month. Even when the post stopped, they somehow contrived to be there. One winter it snowed so heavily that the mailbox completely disappeared and yet somehow, miraculously, when she opened it on the afternoon of the thaw, there was the latest, resting in accusatory silence in the middle of the tray. She wonders how long he's known about them.

"I meant to give them to you. I just didn't want to upset you again. She left and -"

"Do you still have them?"

"No. I'm sorry. They got lost in the move to Portland." They were thrown out with the garbage, after she found out that Aaron had been lying to her.

He nods and stands awkwardly slouched with his weight on one leg, as his right hand fiddles with something inside his breast pocket. She waits for him to continue, to berate her, but he doesn't. At times like this, it would be easier if her were more like her - if he would stamp and shout a bit, and, after he's spread his hurt around, forgive.

He cocks his head, listening. "That's my ride."

"I can't hear-" She hears. Soon she can make out a familiar snorting and rattling, and the white roof of Hurley's beloved van becomes visible above the hedge. One day many years ago, she had returned home to see the same van drawn up on the sidewalk by their house. She had dropped her shopping and run - run like a hunted devil - inside and through the lounge to the yard at the back. And there she found Walt, demonstrating to Aaron how to throw knives at the Judas tree.

She trails after him to the road. The driver, a fair-haired man of about her son's age, leans out of the window.

"Good to meet you at last, Claire. Sure wish we could stop here longer"

"But the chopper's waiting," says Aaron. "And the weather'll be bad tomorrow." He's already climbed into the passenger seat. "This is Julian."

"I know," she says. "I've seen pictures." With the door already halfway shut, Aaron pauses.

"I completely forgot." His lies always sound so gentle. "They asked me to give you this." He draws an envelope out of his pocket.

"What is it?"

He shrugs. "Don't know. Something they wanted you to have. Bye, mom." He buckles his seatbelt and prepares to slam the door shut.

"Are you happy?" she asks. She means it, but he raises his eyebrows sardonically.

"Very happy."

"That's good then," she says lightly, and strokes his hair. He pulls her into a one-armed bear hug. She bites her lip. The sob, the permanent grief, surges up to her throat, then falls away before he can hear it. She's not sorry that he's going. She's sorry that he came, and disturbed the steady, humming song of the humidifier, broke the green warmth for the sake of a pot of anthuriums and a message from somebody else.

"Love you, mom. I'll try to get up here more often. It's just – hard to get away. There's always something, ya know?" He grins at her toothily, and his eyes don't meet hers. Somewhere in that part of the past that is the ever-constant, ever-true present, a three year old boy clings onto her mother's hand as he kicks sullenly at the floor.

"Of course, baby. All my love to Hurley. No love to Walt. Tell him I'm waiting for the diamond ring."

She watches the van leave, until even the noise of the engine has been swallowed by the everyday hum of the suburbs. It never gets easier. Every year, he could ask her to go home with him, and he never does. Every year, she's more certain he never will.

An hour later, she remembers the envelope. Inside, there are some photos and a message on a scrap of paper with unfamiliar handwriting and an illegible signature.

_Walt discovered a camera buried near the old crash site. I believe it belonged to Ethan. Hugo thought you should have these. _

The first picture shows a short blonde girl talking to an older, balding man standing with his back to the photographer. She stares at it. Then she tears through them, glancing at each one and tossing it to the side – the blonde with Boone, the blonde with Jack and Sayid, the blonde whispering with Kate. Soon there is only one picture left. It was taken at sunset: Charlie is lying on his back at the water's edge and laughing, half-buried in sand, as she gets ready to drop another shovelful on his stomach.

She gathers the photos up and goes through them again, slowly, taking the time to touch each face with her fingertips. Then she rips them to pieces, and afterwards, sitting cross-legged on the beige carpet, looks numbly across to the rectangular mirror opposite. A tired, greying photograph of the blonde and pregnant child stares back at her.

Time flies, she thinks. And if only the time would fly back, and the airplane to land, and herself to the empty beach, and if only it were night in the jungle, and the sky importunate.

But it does not, and so she returns to her greenhouse.


End file.
